I usually don’t appreciate a vampire movie with the undead walking freely during the daytime. Byzantium vampires are that different from the classic ones; they don’t sleep in coffins, they don’t need soil from their birthplaces, and they are not affected by sunlight. They also are capable of making sex. Alas, they differ from the Twilight vampires as well. Their creation has some logic, even if it is not guided by the classic law. They have in common the bloodsucking. The reason you may enjoy it is Neil Jordan’s touch.
Gemma Arterton in Byzantium
[source of all pics: imdb.com]
The Plot In Which Byzantium Vampires Are Involved
Two centuries ago, Clara is a scrawny ignorant maid in rural England. She has an unclean aspect, but she looks attractive for Darvel, a shy Royal Navy officer. His companion, Captain Ruthven, is a vicious creature and a serial rapist. He takes the innocent Clara on his horse, seduces her, and then takes her to work in a brothel.
But no, that’s not how the movie begins, you first meet Eleanor, a solemn high school girl with literary aptitudes, present day. “I am Eleanor Webb. I throw my story into the wind”. An old man happens to read her thrown over the window paper sheets. When he meets Eleanor, he invites her to his house, telling her that he’s ready. All that seems kind of strange, but not unexpected. Neil Jordan directed Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire.
Byzantium Vampires – saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton
Clara works in a striptease bomb. She does the occasional lap dance too. She feels a guy looking for her and she runs. That guy wanted to kill her, but she was quicker. She decapitates him by strangling his neck with a piano chord.
Saoirse Ronan and Caleb Landry Jones in Byzantium
You’ll soon find who’s who and what happened before. Clara and Eleanore don’t look like mother and daughter, but that is because both of them are vampires and Eleanor was 16 or so when she became undead. You see, I haven’t said “made”, because here, in this tale, the way to become a vampire is different. Clara is twenty-something.
The rest and everything, actually, is up to you to discover by watching it.
Byzantium – Cast
Gemma Arterton is Clara, a sometimes sultry gal, a few hundred years old. I say sometimes because her character is made to look scrawny, diseased, famished, regardless what feminists try to imply. She looks good during the month or the week the action takes place. Saoirse Ronan is Eleanor, a girl who happens to be a vampire, like her mother. It is interesting how filmmakers cast Ronan in a lot of Gothic-like films, probably because she’s Irish, but I suspect that she herself enjoys that too. Sam Riley seems to be a kind-hearted soldier named Darvell, who apparently loves Clara but lacks the courage to act.
Sam Riley before becoming a vampire (Byzantium)
Jonny Lee Miller is a wicked soldier named Ruthven. Tom Hollander is Kevin Minton, a teacher. Both Frank and Eleanor are his pupils. Daniel Mays is Noel, a slightly slow guy who happens to inherit the Byzantium establishment. Caleb Landry Jones is Frank, a schoolboy who works in the evenings as a waiter in a restaurant, or rather in a retirement house’s dinner. Uri Gavriel is a chief vampire. The credits acknowledge him as Savella, but it’s not relevant in the movie. Another vampire appears, and he’s also irrelevant.
A vile Jonny Lee Miller in Byzantium
Directed by Neil Jordan, Byzantium was written by Moira Buffini. She wrote Viceroy’s House (2017), “A Vampire Story”, the play upon which Byzantium is based, Jane Eyre (2011), and Tamara Drewe (2010), which, again, starred Gemma Arterton. I liked them all. As for Neil Jordan, he’s an artist. Greta (2018), Ondine (2009), Breakfast on Pluto (2005), The Good Thief (2002), In Dreams (1999), The Butcher Boy (1997), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), and The Crying Game (1992) are only a few of his great movies.
Byzantium has been released in 2012. Established as a Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller. Runtime: 118′. Unfortunately it has been rated on imdb, only 6.5 out of 10.
The Trailer
Revealing or not, this is the trailer. It is very catchy, one has to agree.
Byzantium – Poster
Movie Critics Have Mixed Opinions
Not entirely loved by the critics, Byzantium has its own fans none the less. Some say that Sam Riley is not enough sexually magnetic as Robert Pattinson. I think he looked like a vampire even before becoming one. The twist here is that the two female vampires are not using their fangs to draw blood, but their razor-sharp thumbnails. It has a feminist take because Arterton feeds on thugs, and it’s ethical because Ronan practices a form of euthanasia, she only feeds on people who are tired of human life. The feminists say that Gemma Arterton stays too undressed most of the movie. It is also said that the screenplay is unfocused and the action is not gory enough to fulfill the horror genre.
Byzantium is much better than the majority of the other vampire movies, and the big surprise is that’s not at all boring.
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